Arthur Lopez’s painting of an immigrant family behind bars. The boy holds a card stating “Permanent Resident.” This persecution has been happening, especially here in New Mexico, for years but I did nothing about it.
I don’t think that has ever happened to me before, or if it has, I drained it off, productively, in writing unacceptably angry novels like my Upstate and Straight Man.
My anger has stopped me writing, but it has not stopped me from thinking, as many of us have, about the estimated 41% of white women who voted for Donald Trump.
Not because those women are so different from me.
The truth is that they are me. And I suspect if we were honest, we would all admit that we belong to that 41% at least some of the time.
No, I didn’t vote for Trump. I abhor his policies while also reminding myself that these first ten days are mostly theatre. We allowed ourselves to be jangled by executive orders, clearly illegal in light of our Constitution, which will be rolled back because of public outcry and demonstrations or canceled by Congress—eventually. In the meantime the chaos and fear they sow damage each one of us and our country.
I am part of the 41% because of what I didn’t do before this election and what I didn’t call myself.
I saw this coming, particularly in the kinds of jokes I treated as routine. They were, and are, increasing. Violent and vulgar language has become everyday language, both written and spoken, and I have done nothing to combat it. In fact, I’ve laughed at the jokes.
One joker defined the President’s vow to create “jobs, job, jobs” as hand jobs, boob jobs—and I can’t remember the third.
Cute, huh?
Not really. But I laughed every time I heard it.
Joan Myer’s photograph—hailing our outrageousness which is so important now as a tool of revolt.
I’ve developed so much empathy for male weakness it weighs me down like a tire iron.
He’s addicted, or was.
He was abused as a child.
He never learned anything about women because all of us who spoiled and coddled him never insisted on teaching him anything (which is why a large number of women never have an orgasm with a man. Among many other things.)
I’ve lied and flattered and laughed, just like the women who voted for Trump who said things like “It’s just locker room talk,” or “Boys will be boys,” reassuring ourselves with secret condescension. Because after all, we are so much smarter, so much nicer, and the proof is that we always forgive.
I am horrified when I read that a woman has allowed her boyfriend to abuse her child, even to the point of murder.
But I have stood frozen in my kitchen while my 200-pound then-husband beat my two small sons because they had “sassed” him.
I tried to leave. I went back after a few hours because I was ashamed to go to a shelter. And I accepted his apologies.
Eventually, I left him.
But by then terrible harm had been done. But he was tall and handsome and physically strong and completely self-confident and the only man who has ever asked me to sit on his lap. And he was a violent alcoholic with a history of abusing women.
How do I, how do we, deal with our secret attraction to these bad boys?
Why do we find them amusing, and even sexy?
Do we have to agree with two lines in Sylvia Plath’s poem “Daddy”:
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face…
The boot is in our faces now, no matter what the eventual result of the president’s legally-dubious executive orders may be.
We elected him. We can’t comfort ourselves with signs that say, “Not My President.”
He is our president because we didn’t protest—we laughed and excused and found the boy-man sort of charming.
He is our president because we never called ourselves feminists.
[For more, please read, How to Build an Autocracy from David Frum in The Atlantic and There’s Something Happening Here, and It Is Terrifyingly Clear by Paul Gibson.]
Powerful!
I did protest. I did speak out through Facebook media. I was “unfriended” by some. I remembered what occurred in history in another country, and realized many didn’t even know history. I was surrounded by like minds, and assumed all those I considered wise, would do likewise. But some did not, and I woke up to complete bewilderment.
My God, what just happened? Who could find this kind of man appropriate as a leader of our nation?
Your story makes me realize how blessed I have been to have had nothing but great men in my life.
The election was illegitimate, in my view.
Sorry, Sally, but not all of us were in the 41 percent – ever. And what do we do to make certain that group shrinks and that its members grow to be mature, self realized white women.
Thank you, Sallie Bingham. Like you, I am also from Louisville. Many of my old high school pals and extended family residing in Louisville and surrounds, (inc Southern Indiana, but of course,) have engaged in a year long, pervasive and relentless, online campaign of vitriol, never before seen, at least by me. Vile, racist, xenophobic, gay-hating, Muslim-hating, sexist…and…..most of them are… women. “Christian” women. In fact, all. My menfolk, methinks, are just too polite to speak their minds. This group of women has reviled “Hillary” since day one. Our country’s current tsunami of “White, Christian Men Rising, Taking Back Our Country-Gol-dangit” has, a resounding and vigilant posse of white women at it’s core. The question occurs to me: is Feminism dead?
Good time to weed out the stupid people.
Or left my college town of Louisville after a nice career to return to my home state of NM; ran for public office AND won in 2016. I’m now the first female County Treasurer for Bernalillo County ! It’s up to all of us to do what we can to step up and give our best for our community in the face of adversity, discrimination and threats to our freedom. I’m more motivated than ever to keep fighting for democracy.
“I” did NOT elect him! No words!
Thank you for posting this thought provoking article, Charlene!
Sallie, I deeply appreciate your honest revelations.
There have been so many occasions when I have wanted the wife to stand up to the husband… for her own good health, for the sake of the community. To create true partnership, not be the manipulated one, not just stand by his side and look good on his arm or cushion him from public outcry.
It’s why Hillary was a weak candidate. She was not autonomous in spite of her considerable experience. Because there was always Bill. She’d stood by his side instead of standing up to him on behalf of every American woman. In spite of how that forced him further and further past center and he then gave us deregulated media, rapid loss of US manufacturing and distorted incarceration of African American men. Because of this she could not represent a woman’s strength to counteract her opponent’s misogyny.
Thank you.
Too late. ..but we can hope.
Sallie, thank you for your sanity. I have been voting for 50 yrs & never felt the unease that I feel each day, now. I have such a sense of foreboding about our nation. I am constantly reminded of the giant marches in Russia that preceded their revolution. I pray for our nation every day.